Shrubs or trees. Branchlets slender; 1- and 2-year-old branchlets blackish, densely tomentulose. Buds reddish brown, glabrous. Leaves alternate; petiole 3-5 mm, tomentose; leaf blade oblanceolate, broadest distally, ca. 3-4 cm × 7-8 mm, abaxially greenish, at first tomentulose, glabrescent, adaxially green, base cuneate, margin serrate, apex shortly acuminate. Flowering precocious. Catkins alternate. Male catkin 2-3 cm × ca. 7 mm, subsessile, with 2 or 3 leaflets at base; bracts yel-

lowish green proximally, purple distally, ca. 1.5 mm, villous. Male flower: stamens 2, connate throughout, 3-4 mm, with dense hairs at base; anthers globose, 4-loculed. Female catkin terete, ca. 2 cm × 4 mm, elongate in fruit, sessile, with 2 lanceolate leaflets at base; bracts black, ovate, ca. as long as ovary, sparsely long pubescent. Female flower: ovary ovoid, tomentose, sessile; style long, nearly as long as ovary; stigma capitate, entire or 2-lobed. Fl. Mar, fr. Apr-May.

* Roadsides; 500-800 m. S Shaanxi (Hanzhong Shi), Shandong.